The Heist

As mentioned before, one of the cooler aspects of working at Summit Base was that you lived in an actual building rather than a tent.

For whatever reason, I never lived in the Voyageur Cabin, even though it was supposed to be where Voyageurs lived. Over the different summers I either lived at the Rock House (RIP), the new staff tents, the back of the summit office, the Howie Hut - a building that was falling down and hadn't been lived in for many years prior, nor was it occupied again after I left and one summer spent most of my nights on the summit of Mt. Stevens.

This story takes place in the Rock House. It was a hot day, and I had just come down from the cliffs where we instructed scouts on rock climbing. It was on these cliffs that I first observed the awesomeness that was K.W. It was when I was attending camp as a Scout and our troop had signed up to go to these very same cliffs for a climbing introduction. K.W. was one of our instructors. After he had showed us how to put on the necessary gear and tie the right knots he showed us the route we would climb. I think he was wearing flip flops at the time. He made it look so easy, he just put his feet on the wall, put his hands on the wall and looked like he was climbing a ladder. Armed with a pair of climbing shoes I was beginning to think this would be a joke. Then it was my turn. What had seemed to be ladder now seemed like a sheet of glass with small nubbins. Essentially I fell up the climb because K.W. was belaying me. If you have a strong belayer like K.W. he can do much more than simply make sure that you don't fall, he can actually pull you up the climb by keeping the rope very tight and using strength and body weight to get you up.

On this day, I had been instructing a climb. I think it was the summer of 1995 when I didn't really work at summit but pretended I did. I think we were pretty flush with staff so a guy named Beaver and I spent most of our time at the top of the climb. It was very easy work. Once the scouts finished the climb, we took them off of the belay ropes and switched them to a rappell set up. The scouts were usually most nervous to step over the ledge, but once they committed they learned that the rope would hold them and had a blast rappelling. It was a ratio of 10 minutes of singing Irish Drinking songs with Beaver - he was particularly into singing "The Wild Colonial Boy" and 30 seconds of work. Unlike the bottom of the climb though, there was no shade. We didn't get very many scorchers in the Daks, but every so often you would get a good hot day. Once the rock got good and hot it would tend to increase the effective temperature too.

After the group was done, we divided up the climbing gear and headed back down to the rock house, about a 10-15 minute hike. Beaver and I ended up in the Rock House. The living room was nothing more than a collection of old chairs and sofas, bits of wood screwed into the wall to practice climbing, an old dartboard that claimed the forehead of the load and a small refrigerator. I cracked open the fridge and there was a fresh sixer of Molson Canadian. Since we were relatively far North, you could get a good selection of Molson and Labbatt and other Canadian beer at the local stores. It looked so inviting with the condensation forming on the neck and dripping down to the label. The only problem was that this beer belonged to the Quacker.

We called him the quacker because he had kind of a weird voice and when he talked, particularly if he got excited or mad, he tended to sound like a duck. Most of us kind of viewed whatever we put in the fridge as community property, but the Quacker definitely did not. His name was on the box, but Beaver and I couldn't resist. The first two went down so quick and smooth we barely noticed we had emptied them. We had planned to just have one each, but it seemed like we had cheated ourselves out of enjoying those first two. The next two, we enjoyed like gentlemen. As we got down to the last third of a bottle or so, it became clear that we would still be thirsty. The last two beers seemed so lonely too. Sort of like that last bit of orange juice or milk in a container, you hate to leave it. At least that is how Beaver and I rationalized it. Just like that, the entire sixer was gone. The box remained, still clearly labeled. So we did the only responsible thing. We carefully filled each bottle up with water from the sink in the bathroom. We were lucky the bottles were twist off - because they became twist on. We dutifully replaced each bottle and all seemed to be OK.

Later that evening, a bunch of us were sitting around and I believe we had purchased some new beer at that time. The Quacker wanted to drink his beer though. As he reached in the fridge, Beaver and I tried not to laugh. It was pretty clear that there was a problem. Usually when you twist off the cap there is a satisfying hiss of carbon dioxide escaping and a little vapor trail. This time there was nothing. Quacker was probably 95% sure he had been hoodwinked, but when he tipped it back there was no doubt. He smiled at first, thinking that someone had helped themselves to one of his beers. The smile quickly faded as he opened each successive beer. By the last two, he was livid and Beaver and I were bursting on the inside. If he hadn't been so angry, we probably would have told him. Instead, we told him that it was probably a bear. This only made him angrier. Of course it only made it funnier for us. You've probably seen a mother duck quacking and flapping its wings like crazy if you accidentally get too close to its young - if you think of a human making the same sounds and flapping his arms - you are pretty close to being there!